Transformers: Dark Of The Moon Has A $21.5 Million Thursday

While I rarely give credit to Michael Bay for anything, one thing that I will say is that the man knows how to make a movie that will make a ton of cash. Over the course of the last 16 years he has made billions off of lowest common denominator filmmaking and has exploited audiences desire for movies that completely abandon story and logic in favor of chaos and explosions. It's been known for months that despite the backlash against Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen that the third movie would be a critic-proof hit and the numbers are agreeing.

Despite still underperforming compared to the second installment of the franchise, Transformers: Dark of the Moon is still on pace to become the winner of 2011's biggest opening weekend gross, pulling in another $21.455 million from Thursday screenings. The film has now raked in $64.68 million total, which is $27 million lower than Transformers 2's two-day gross back in 2008, but it's expected that the film will stand around $150 million by the end of Sunday. Variety also reports that the movie is also succeeding in the 3D arena, with 60% of the grosses coming from 3D screens (in comparison, Cars 2 only saw 45% of it's money from the new technology). With Friday now here, the movie will see some counter-programming competition, as Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts will try and steal sections of the adult audience with Larry Crowne while Monte Carlo hopes to capture some of the tween audience.

There's currently a lot of pressure on Transformers and Harry Potter to perform exceptionally well in the 3D arena, and I'm curious if 60% is enough to keep the format alive. For comparison's sake, 80% of Avatar audiences saw the film in 3D, and that was before the technology was proliferated. While three-fifths of the audience is a strong number, I'm not sure it will serve as proof that movie-goers want to continue seeing dim, blurry movies, regardless of how good the 3D is.